Tabla de contenidos para January 2021 en MOJO

Frazey Ford VANCOUVER SOUL What music are you currently grooving to? I’ve been revisiting Nina Simone’s live 1968 album, ‘Nuff Said! She’s the master of impeccable, sparse groove. I also love Khruangbin and Leon Bridges’ collaboration EP, Texas Sun, and Deva Mahal’s cover of her dad’s [Goffin & King cover] Take A Giant Step. I’m newly obsessed with an Ethiopian nun and solo pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. She’s otherworldly. Joan Armatrading’s Whatever’s For Us, was my summer go-to record. Jennifer Castle’s Monarch Season is dreamy. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? It would have to be Al Green, I’m Still In Love With You. I’ve listened to it thousands of times. I never tire of it. What was the first record you ever bought? And…

Andre Williams The Greasy Chicken (FORTUNE, 1957) Top wino R&B laffs, with whacky sound effects and accents, from the storied survivor of the blues. The follow-up to his 1956 hit Bacon Fat, this predates 1968’s also-gas- tric-juicy Pig Snoots, which he released as the Natural Bridge Bunch. Ancient Grease Mother Grease The Cat (MERCURY, 1970) Hard bluesy rock with progressive tendencies from South Wales: trippy lyrics about finding true reality - “Aphrodite dressed in rainbows, pass the wine,” don’t mind if we do - but nothing, sadly, about getting your mum to slather Tiddles in unguents. Atomic Rooster Nice’N'Greasy (DAWN, 1973) What made grease the dream in the ‘70s? The Grease Band, Greasy Truckers, Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon… anyway, here Atomic Rooster’s soulful blues rock comes in a lovely fag-stubbed-out-in-a-fried-…

WHEN RZA’s first brush with fame as Prince Rakeem flopped in the early ‘90s, the Wu-Tang Clan’s visionary producer set about swarming the rap industry with a nine- strong band of what he calls “killer bees”, including cousins GZA and late wildcard Ol’ Dirty Bastard. A dyed-in-wool film fanatic, RZA now juggles authorial control of the sprawling Wu empire with another career as a director. Zooming from home in California, the erudite polymath expands on how his hyper-taut third film Cut Throat City’s fable, about childhood friends forced into crime to survive, has powerful parallels to his own career. What was it about Paul Cuschieri’s script that drew you to Cut Throat City? The story about these young men seeing their aspirations turn into desperations, in the backdrop of Hurricane…

PHAROAH SANDERS DOES NOT CONSENT to a great many interviews. In fact MOJO has lost count of the number of times it has asked for an audience with the legendary saxophonist and been turned down. Sitting in Los Angeles’ otherwise deserted Zebulon club in unseasonable 100-degree heat, wearing a straw hat and with his silver beard gathered in a tuft, he explains his elusiveness in soft tones. “Talking, that’s very hard to do,” he says. “I don’t know how to talk about the music. Just let it play.” Sanders has earned the right to approach the media any way he likes. Days away from turning 80, he is still performing with the same passion and spirituality that has marked his career. Just a few days earlier, with a band including…

1 LUCINDA WILLIAMS Good Souls Better Angels (THIRTY TIGERS) 2 BILL CALLAHAN Gold Record (DRAG CITY) 3 DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS The Unraveling (ATO) 4 STEVE EARLE Ghosts Of West Virginia (NEW WEST) 5 ALLISON MOORER Blood (AUTOTELIC/THIRTY TIGERS) 6 RAY WYLIE HUBBARD Bad Trick (BIG MACHINE) 7 LAURA VEIRS My Echo (BELLA UNION) 8 EARLY JAMES Singing For My Supper (NONESUCH) 9 THE LOST BROTHERS After The Fire After The Rain (BIRD DOG) 10 ZEPHANIAH OHORA Listening To The Music (LAST ROUNDUP)…

20 NEW ORDER Power Corruption And Lies (Definitive Edition) RHINO Beautifully enhanced 37 years on, one of New Order’s most shining moments added how-it’s-made demos, live DVDs and a TV doc which illuminated the madness behind the lines with dry Manc wit. 19 ONENESS OF JUJU African Rhythms 1970-1982 STRUT Two-disc comp of James ‘Plunky’ Blanch’s groove team, whose politically conscious, Afro-jazzfunk hybrid blended politics with irresistible calls to dance and sheer rhythmic power. 18 VARIOUS The Harry Smith B-Sides DUST TO DIGITAL Smith’s garlanded 1952 Anthology Of American Folk Music flipped, literally, presenting the B-sides to each of the original 78s recorded between 1926 and 1933. The blues, country and gospel backstory to the folk revival. 17 SHARHABIL AHMED The King Of Sudanese Jazz HABIBI FUNK A joyfully swinging,…

OUT ON HIS PORCH IN THE BLUE RIDGE Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, Moses Sumney watches rabbits and squirrels skitter by. “I think I saw a raccoon last night too,” he marvels, as he kicks aside some snow chains and settles down to talk. Sumney has been an Asheville resident for two years now, having passed through the mountain city on his first US tour in 2014 and finally relocated here, from Los Angeles, in 2018. “I fell in love with it,” he says. “I would come back each year to write and to kind of meditate and get away from the big city. I wanted to leave LA and I did a little stint in London but, ultimately, this is where I wanted to be.” There is a sense…

MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR IN DECREEING Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards And Weep, “Raw, ravaged and personal - a stoned cold classic”, crime writer Ian Rankin recognised a fellow master of the dark arts. Whereas Rankin deals in fiction, though, every hard-boiled twist and primeval turn of Mark Lanegan’s slog through the drug-drenched badlands of grunge-era Seattle was true. The reader wondered how he had survived, let alone added ‘accomplished prose stylist’ to ‘prolific recording artist’ and ‘legendary singer’ in his arsenal of epithets. Lanegan has a simple answer for that: “Pure dumb luck.” Congratulations - Sing Backwards And Weep is MOJO’s Book Of The Year. “Cool!” Do you have a theory why it’s struck such a chord? “Not a lot of books get as gritty. When I was getting…

GRIAN CHATTEN Fontaines D.C.’s dashing young existentialist. I’m going to go with 925 by [young north London indie oddballs] Sorry [above]. It’s just an album of amazing songs, by which I mean, like, old school craft and penmanship. It’s full of catchy choruses and riffs and simultaneously full of sentimentality but also… bile. Asha [Lorenz, singer] is such an incredible deliverer. She knows how to sound really sickened by what she’s saying. She’ll be part of the meanness and cruelty of a situation. And the music really fits that - like, the song Wolf has this kind of hellish merry-go-round quality. The other amazing thing I heard was [1978 French art-disco slink] The Sphinx by Amanda Lear. I heard it in a shop in Paris when we were over there…

Robbie Basho Song Of The Avatar: The Lost Master Tapes (Tompkins Square CD) ROBBIE BASHO could hardly be described as a delicate musician. A guitarist who snapped strings more than picked them and whose strums often suggested he was fanning some invisible flame, Basho treated his most famous instrument like an extension of his body’s own sinew, meant to be flexed and stretched and used. That principle persisted in his piano playing, defined by tufts of emphatic notes that cohered into imposing clouds. And then there was that notoriously orotund voice, an unrestrained operatic bellow that seemed forever reaching, as if toward the heavens. This feeling - of unapologetic conviction and endless searching, channelled into song - is clear from the first belligerently bent notes of Harakiri, Kali Style, the…

ALTHOUGH A WHITE STRIPES SHOW didn’t officially have a setlist, the band typi- cally closed more than a quarter of their gigs in 2002 with the same song: Boll Weevil, a traditional blues first popularised in the 1930s by Leadbelly, about the itinerant beetle which came to the US from Mexico and ravaged the cotton industry. The song portrays the migrant bug sympathetically, repeatedly stating that whatever damage or annoyance he might cause, he’s “just looking for a home”. For all that Jack White parlayed the tale as a playful Bob Dylan talkin’ blues, the song’s role as a finale seemed significant – increasingly so, as The White Stripes’ popularity surged from underground cult through rock stardom and on to pop-cultural phenomenon. “The next verse is all about myself –…

IT WAS SOME invitation. MOJO had been asked to accompany The White Stripes to Brazil in June 2005, playing dates to launch fifth album Get Behind Me Satan. Our adventure began with a press conference promoting the sold-out concert at Manaus’s 19th century opera house Teatro Amazones - inspiration for Werner Herzog’s movie, Fitzcarraldo - where Jack White rattled officials by suggesting the band might be loud enough to shake the plaster from its opulent ceiling. Then, a guided trip up the Amazon with the Stripes and White’s new girlfriend, Mancunian model Karen Elson, whom he’d met while filming the promo for Blue Orchid only three weeks before. “FROM THE FIRST TIME I MET HER, I WAS TELLING JACK, ‘MARRY THAT GIRLI’ AND HEDID!”MEG WHITE Our boat travelled to the…

Kris Drever Where The World Is Thin REVEAL. CD/DL An outstanding guitarist, assured singer and an inspirational songwriter and arranger of unerring vision and subtlety, Kris Drever’s talents reach far beyond his celebrated role as a third of Lau. Keynote track Scapa Flow 1919 tells in haunting detail of a horrendous episode when Germans sank their own naval fleet off Orkney, and his sparse take on the familiar Westlin’ Winds is glorious, while even with his more inward looking material, Drever’s instinct for a killer chorus is unmatched. Shooglenifty Acid Croft Vol 9 SHOOGLE. CD/DL Some assumed the death in 2016 of their brilliant and charismatic fiddle player Angus Grant spelt curtains for the ever- inventive band of musical explorers. But drafting in fiddler/singer Eilidh Shaw is a masterstroke and…

British Sea Power Open Season ROUGH TRADE. CD/LP BSP’s 2005 second album, now a gatefold double long-player with radio sessions, B-sides etc. Its dramatic Eno-ish rock spoke of bookish romantics who liked the outdoors (presaging by some years the trend for urbanites to take up wild swimming etc). JB The Chills Submarine Bells FIRE. LP Martin Phillipps’ ascending Dunedin crew left Flying Nun for d major subsidiary Slash in 1990, gilding their high quality, ‘60s m psych-influenced indie pop with e studio polish, to win commercial e success and melodic highs (Heavenly Pop Hit). Also reissued: ‘92’s essentially solo Soft Bomb. JB Elvis Costello The Complete Armed Forces UME. LP Nine vinyl discs and prolix (obvs) sleevenotes from EC swell 1979’s pop gem. Accidents Will Happen as piano ballad from…

LEONARD COHEN doesn’t have that big a discography for someone who made music over a five-decade span: 15 studio albums, though he made up for a near-decade gap after The Future (1992) by recording four albums in the last five years of his life (the last, 2019’s Thanks For The Dance, released posthumously.) It wasn’t that he couldn’t write a song, he told me as his biographer. But he was a perfectionist - which made for 15 essential albums. Cohen was a relatively old 33 when his first album came out in 1967, when the mantra was to trust no one over 30. Born and raised in Montreal, he’d previously published four books of poetry and two novels. His first collection, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), had him hailed as…

• Mitch Mitchell re-recorded his drum parts from the sets in the studio, since wind beset the original recordings. • Hendrix dedicates Foxy Lady to Pat Hartley, who had appeared in a Warhol Screen Test and became his “co-star” in Rainbow Bridge. She now runs her own film company. • During Rainbow Bridge, Hendrix assassinates Wein, then delivers a speech as the New Age President Of The United States. • Search online for the promotional video of Hendrix for the documentary. The Voodoo Child (Slight Return) footage is a gift.…

VELVET ORIGINS 3 Lou Reed and John Cale’s b and The Primitives play their first gig at the Riverside Plaza Hotel. Afterwards they tape a rehearsal at member Walter DeMaria’s East Village loft. On the tape is novelty 45 The Ostrich, released soon on the Pickwick City label. DINO, BILLY, IRA & GEORGE 22 Billy Wilder’s Dean Martin-starring sex comedy Kiss Me Stupid is released. Dino sings three songs by Ira Gershwin using unheard music by his late brother George. Blasted by the Catholic Legion Of Decency, the film flops. BRITS GO HOME 26 In Billboard, Dick Clark says British bands in the US - the “Redcoat invasion” - earn fees inflated by The Beatles’ success. In the UK, the new Impresarios Guild, chaired by Tito Burns and Larry Parnes,…

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WHEN PEOPLE LOOK BACK ON 2020 in years to come, I doubt it’ll be a few album releases they think about first. Nevertheless, as venues remain shuttered, along with so much else of what we normally take for granted, the sustaining value of a long-playing record has become more pronounced than ever. The 75 albums that MOJO’s writers have chosen as the best of 2020 for this issue aren’t all escapist, or celebrator y, or nostalgic for a less complicated world than the current one. They are, though, a great reminder that cultural life endures - and helps us endure - through even the hardest times. Hopefully you’ll find some new favourites in this special issue; it’s been a good year for our music. Against the odds, it’s been a…

MARIANNE FAITHFULL’S forthcoming album interprets the 19th century British Romantic poets, assisted by Bad Seeds multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis and producer Head. Yet it very nearly didn’t come to pass. In early April, just weeks into lockdown, the singer spent three weeks in hospital with Covid-19. In her first interview since recovery, Faithfull admits she’s still feeling the aftershocks. “I really hurt my lungs,” she says. “This, after smoking most of my life and having emphysema. And my short-term memory is affected. But I’m told that when you have coronavirus as badly as I did, that happens. But your memory comes back, and mine is coming back. And my lungs are coming back too. And I’ve made a beautiful record.” “Your memory comes back… my lungs are coming back too.”MARIANNE FAITHFULL…

WHEN DIRECTOR Julien Temple agreed to make a film about The Pogues’ irascible frontman Shane MacGowan, now 62 and wheelchair-bound, he was determined it wouldn’t be your standard-issue ‘rockumentary’. What he didn’t predict, however, was it becoming more like wildlife photography. “It was like David Attenborough filming a snow leopard,” laughs Temple. “He just wouldn’t turn up. Once we waited three days for him in Tipperary, but he chose to stay in a pub five miles away. But the fact Shane made it difficult forced the film-making to be more imaginative and inventive.” And inventive Crock Of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan certainly is. Robbed of a conventional commentary from its subject - “the first thing Shane said to me was, ‘I’m not doing any fucking interviews,’” says…

1 I don’t think I was ready to be playing with John Coltrane. Sanders (left) and Coltrane at the Ascension sessions, June 1965. 2 I always feel like I should get my soprano saxophone out: Pharoah in the studio, 1968. 3 Sanders and Sonny: Pharoah on-stage with guitarist Sonny Sharrock in Berlin, 1968. 4 This creator has a master plan: Pharoah performs during 1974. 5 Sax sidemen: Sanders (right) and Ravi Coltrane on-stage with the McCoy Tyner Quintet, Iridium club, New York, May 2004. 6 Bottoms up: Pharoah blows his bell at the 38th Annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, April 2007. 7 Free spirits: Sanders flanked by Joachim Kuhn (left) and Zakir Hussain, Festival Jazz à la Villette, Paris, September 2017. 8 Saxophone summit: Pharoah with admirers Kamasi…

NEIL YOUNG Archives II: 1972-1976 Reprise CD THERE IS method in the madness if not the waiting. Eleven years after Archives I concluded with War Song, Neil Young’s 1972 protest single with Graham Nash, the second broadside in Young’s serial-box set project begins back at the front lines: Letter From ‘Nam, a solo demo taped that same year, never delivered on a studio LP. But another song caught that day, the broken-love ballad The Bridge, was strong enough to hit the road, becoming a deep breath in the open-bar havoc of Young’s 1973 live album, Time Fades Away. And so it goes for 10 hours and change, Young pulling at the connective threads between his official works and established triumphs, exploratory sessions and last-minute caprice, as he writes the definitive…

1 TATSUHISA YAMAMOTO AshiotO (BLACK TRUFFLE) 2 SARAH DAVACHI Cantus, Descant (late music) 3 DELPHINE DORA L’Inattingible (THREE:FOUR) 4 TASHI DORJI Stateless (DRAG CITY) 5 FUJIIIIIIIIIIITA Iki (HALLOW GROUND) 6 OLIVER COATES Skins N Slime (rvng intl) 7 CLAIRE ROUSAY It Was Always Worth It (LONGFORM EDITIONS) 8 LUCRECIA DALT No Era Sólida (RVNG INTL) 9 RICHARD SKELTON These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound (PHANTOM LIMB) 10 BRONIUS KUTAVIČIUS Last Pagan Rites/From The Yotvingian Stone (MUSIC INFORMATION CENTRE LITHUANIA)…

1 SING BACKWARDS & WEEP Mark Lanegan (WHITE RABBIT) 2 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS: A VISUAL HISTORY Paul Drummond (ANTHOLOGY EDITIONS) 3 BLOOD: A MEMOIR Allison Moorer (DA CAPO) 4 SMALL HOURS: THE LONG NIGHT OF JOHN MARTYN Graeme Thomson (OMNIBUS) 5 BROKEN GREEK Pete Paphides (QUERCUS) 6 A NEW DAY YESTERDAY: UK PROGRESSIVE ROCK & THE 1970S Mike Barnes (OMNIBUS) 7 ODETTA: A LIFE IN MUSIC AND PROTEST Ian Zack (BEACON PRESS) 8 HAWKWIND: DAYS OF THE UNDERGROUND Joe Banks (STRANGE ATTRACTOR) 9 I WANNA BE YOURS John Cooper Clarke (PICADOR) 10 MIND OVER MATTER: THE MYTHS AND MYSTERIES OF DETROIT’S FORTUNE RECORDS Billy Miller and Michael Hurtt (KICKS BOOKS)…

THE SCENE: AN UPHOLSTERY workshop in sleepy Corktown, downtown Detroit. In this square, low-ceilinged outhouse circa 1993, 17-year-old John Anthony Gillis serves an apprenticeship under Brian Muldoon, a keen punk/ garage aficionado 16 years his senior. Come evening time, they’ll push back all the furniture, tools and machinery, set up a drum kit for Brian, a guitar amp and mike for Jack, and blast the night away. “Jack was always obviously a performer, and I wasn’t,” Muldoon told this writer in 2003, as he aired tracks from a shoebox full of CDs documenting those private jams: The Stooges’ Down On The Street, Arthur Lee’s Five String Serenade, a Zeppelin- heavy take on Dylan’s Girl From The North Country. Already in fierce evidence: the squealing electric-guitar runs and desperate vocal quaver…

JW: “When you started making solo records, did you like what was happening?” IP: “I was miserable. Lost. Lonesome. And… nostalgic. I finally stopped with the band - I looked at what I was doing, looked at who I was, and knew I was about to go backwards if I kept trying that. David Bowie offered me the chance to make solo records, basically with him as my band. Artistically, I really like The Idiot and Lust For Life – but I was personally miserable. When I heard The Damned and the Sex Pistols, I just felt so wistful. These guys had bands, and I didn’t. I felt stranded.” JW: “But why did you feel stranded, Iggy? Why did you feel stranded if they were honouring you?” IP: “The basic…

AC/DC Power Up COLUMBIA. CD/DL/LP AT THE START OF OCTOBER 2020, TWO giants passed in the night. Outgoing: Eddie Van Halen. Incoming: AC/DC, back against all odds. As Angus Young tweeted of Van Halen’s prowess and sent heartfelt condolences to his family, we listened to the American, of course, but also to the new AC/DC single Shot In The Dark. Possessed of a hooky little intro and backing vocals decidedly more roustabout than Beach Boy, the DC song’s adrenalised wattage felt medicinal after Van Halen passed; a fortifying dram as another strata of the hard rock canon crumbled. Someone monumental had gone; but equally, something monumentally comforting remained. In truth, it had been a job keeping Stonehenge up (see illustration and Back Story). But ever since Geordie’s Brian Johnson succeeded…

Graham Reynolds The Lodger FIRE. CD/DL/LP For the third in the label’s excellent series of reimagined soundtracks, the US director Richard Linklater’s composer-collaborator has given Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 expressionist horror a Semi-Industrial score. Reynolds moves from the furtive to the hysterical, creating a nightmarish ballet mécanique that recognises a somnambulistic choreography in Hitchcock’s silent masterpiece. Acanthus Le Frisson Des Vampires FINDERS KEEPERS. CD/DL/LP There is a school of thought that holds all ‘70s horror soundtracks should include scratchy guitars, clanging bells, flute solos, jazz breakbeats, male choirs and dubbed dialogue about crucifixes and bloody carnage. Available for the first time, this score for Jean Rollin’s ultra-saucy 1971 vampire flick has all that and is the height of groovy, demonic cool. Clark Daniel Isn’t Real DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON. DL/LP For Adam Egypt…

Jabu Sweet Company DO YOU HAVE PEACE?. DL/LP Bristolians’ crepuscular world of dazed beats and gauzy vocals. JABU’S DOWNTEMPO sound is akin to staring out from a rain- flecked window - shapes lose definition but the experience is vivid. Their 2017 debut, Sleep Heavy, was a moving reflection on grief. Now, Sweet Company finds the trio - producer Amos Childs and vocalists Alex Rendall and Jasmine Butt (pictured with poet/ DJ Daniela Dyson) turning to the more traditional topics of love and relationships. Using a palette of woozy loops, Childs creates lo-fi R&B dipped in ambient and ‘80s experimental pop (AR Kane and Cocteau Twins are reference points). On Lately, Rendall pleads, in striking falsetto, for the object of his desire to “be cruel to me” atop a 2-step/reggaeton hybrid…

Aretha Franklin Aretha RHINO. CD/DL/LP ONE OF THE first essential box sets of the CD era was Rhino’s 1992 Queen Of Soul, four discs of vocal dynamite distilled from Aretha Franklin’s Atlantic recordings, 1967 to ’79, AKA the glory years. There have been many Aretha box sets since, some seeking to rewrite history by mitigating the disappointments of her first relationship, with Columbia. There are fine performances to be found there, but nothing can shake the certainty that her very best work was done between the years 1967 and ’72 at Atlantic. Her standards were so high after that year’s live gospel set, Amazing Grace, that a procession of star producers failed to recapture her explosive power and emotion, delicacy and truth, quite so consistently, even though her singing was…

With Cohen, poetry went hand-in-hand with song. There’s around a dozen collections in print - some post- 1968 also feature lyrics. A good start: Stranger Music: Selected Poems And Songs (McClelland & Stewart, 1993); Book Of Longing (Ecco, 2007) and The Flame (Canongate, 2018). There have been several Cohen biographies: this writer’s, written with his support, is I’m Your Man: The Life Of Leonard Cohen (Vintage, 2012; updated 2017). No truly essential documentary movies, but check out the 1965 Canadian film Ladies And Gentlemen… Mr Leonard Cohen (YouTube or DVD Collectors box, £23.45) and 1970’s Leonard Cohen At The Isle Of Wight (Sony Legacy, 2009, £10.21).…

A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brain Eno’s Diary Brian Eno FABER & FABER. £20 1995 original updated for 25th anniversary, with spiky new introduction. Brian Eno, self-proclaimed ‘clever chap with words’, likes to tell us important things. Living, by his own admission, a privileged life, in which someone else is exercised by boring stuff like paying the bills, Eno has plenty of time to be Eno. He’s an academic manqué, e-mailing his friend the American polymath Stewart Brand, and musing on politics, fashion, identity, war, creativity and more in his Appendices. Of course, he’s constantly in demand in the studio too - happy and charmed by Bono’s (over) enthusiasms; voicing a few reservations about Bowie’s Outside, pre-release - but the background noise is of a man keen to show that…

DJ and Balearic beat pioneer JOSÉ PADILLA (below, b.1955) made famous the chillout genre with a series of mix compilations named after the San Antonio bar where he was resident DJ, Café Del Mar. He’d moved to Ibiza in 1975 and would sell bootleg tapes of the crossgenre sets he designed to accompany the sunset views. The first official Café Del Mar compilation in 1994, which he curated, began one of the most successful series of comps ever. He also recorded solo and DJ’d internationally. FOUNDER of LA’s Slash Records, BOB BIGGS (b.1946) nurtured the city’s unique strand of punk, championing bands like X, Germs and The Blasters. Founded in 1978 as a spin-off of his neighbour’s failing punk fanzine, Slash’s first release was Lexicon Devil, a 7-inch by the…

1 OH, PRETTY WOMAN ROY ORBISON LONDON AMERICAN 2 YOU BETTER MOVE ON THE ROLLING STONES DECCA 3 I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER THE BEATLES PARLOPHONE 4 IF I FELL THE BEATLES PARLOPHONE 5 AIN’T THAT LOVING YOU BABY ELVIS PRESLEY RCA VICTOR 6 A HARD DAY’S NIGHT EP THE BEATLES PARLOPHONE 7 EVERYBODY KNOWS TONY MYATT DIAMOND 8 THINGS WE SAID TODAY THE BEATLES PARLOPHONE 9 FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE AL CAIOLA UA 10 SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE THE VENTURES LIBERTY…

…announcing last month that he’d left Motown after 59 years to sign a deal with Republic Records, STEVIE WONDER (right) announced that his new LP will be entitled Through The Eyes Of Wonder. He also spoke of possibly releasing a collection for his mother, Gospel Inspired By Lula, through Motown …a YouTube clip posted by photographer Mick Steff in October showed DURUTTI COLUMN mastermind Vini Reilly at home in Manchester, improvising on his Fender Strat. Said Vini, who suffered a stroke in 2010, “as flawed as it is technically… it’s a lot better than it has been.” MOJO understands that socially distanced recordings for a new album have been made …speaking to Guitar.com, IDLES’ Lee Kiernan said they’d already begun their next record. “There’s, like, 30 songs,” he revealed. “We…

The first Big Star album I bought was a double CD of #1 Record and Radio City in 1992. Rykodisc had released Third/Sister Lovers separately, so I bought all three albums the same day, and that was my soundtrack for a year. They’re perfect, but if I have to boil it down to just one then Radio City gets me the most. A friend in my hometown Florence, Alabama had turned me onto them as a teenager when he played Radio City after some Kinks round at his house. Hearing September Gurls the first time, I just thought it the most perfect pop song imaginable. I love powerpop and I love punk, and Radio City hits the sweet spot in the middle. Their Southern slant on being Anglophiles is really…

1 JANE WEAVER THE REVOLUTION OF SUPER VISIONS The Lancs psychonaut’s new groove sounds like Bowie’s Fashion. The horror party video could be synced with The Winner Takes It All for a #metoo update. Find it: YouTube 2 BILL CALLAHAN & BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY WISH YOU WERE GAY Two songwriting masters tackle the Billie Eilish standard, stoically, while High Llama Sean O’Hagan puts the music on bossa-nova setting. Hot! Find it: Bandcamp 3 SLEAFORD MODS MORK N MINDY (FT BILLY NOMATES) Value English hip-hop with a slow drip of horrible thoughts. Nomates adds an extra ghoulish dimension. Find it: streaming services. 4 KAREN O & WILLIE NELSON UNDER PRESSURE Pleasingly unlikely couple reveal Bowie and Freddie’s 1981 duet as a true heartbreaker. Like two Bowies in a slow empathy exchange. Find it: streaming…

THE SOLO BREAKTHROUGH Pharoah Sanders Karma IMPULSE!, 1969 Sanders’ third solo album is dominated by The Creator Has A Master Plan, which takes Coltrane’s A Love Supreme as its jump-off point and proceeds, over 32 minutes, to become spiritual jazz’s ur-text: listen how he moves from soulful measure to freeform rapture (the 16th to 28th minutes are pure fire) with relatively unflappable elegance. Yodelling vocalist/co-writer Leon Thomas’s own 1969 version also features Sanders (billed as Little Rock) on tenor and, at 4:23, works as a de facto radio edit. THE BANDLEADER SUPREME Pharoah Sanders Black Unity IMPULSE!, 1971 Sanders’ hot streak on Impulse! ran from 1966’s Tauhid through to 1972’s Wisdom Through Music: of those nine albums, Karma and Black Unity are (only just) the picks. This one’s a funky…

MOJO’S BEST OF 2020 PLUS! “THE BEST THING I’VE HEARD ALL YEAR!” IT’S THE BONZO-GONZO BEAT DOWN OF THE YEAR, AS THE 75 BEST ALBUMS OF 2020 FACE OFF. BUSTING THE CHOKE-HOLD OF A TESTING 12 MONTHS WITH THE MUSIC MOVES THAT KEPT US GOING , IN THE FORM OF THE BEST NEW ALBUMS • BEST REISSUES • MUSIC BOOKS • FILMS AND HAPPENINGS INCREDIBLE SCENES! INCLUDING! CORNERSHOP COME OUT FIGHTING • LAURA “THE MAULER” MARLING VS THE PANDEMIC MOSES SUMNEY’S IRRESISTIBLE RISE • MARK “THE GARGOYLE” LANEGAN: HE LIVES! 75 ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER Sideways To New Italy (SUB POP) 74 US GIRLS Heavy Light (4AD) 73 JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT Reunions (SOUTHEASTERN) 72 WIRE 10:20 (PINKFLAG) 71 FIELD MUSIC Making A New World (M EMPHIS INDUSTRIES)…

1 SHEMEKIA COPELAND Uncivil War (ALLIGATOR) 2 WATERMELON SLIM Traveling Man (NORTHERN BLUES) 3 ELVIN BISHOP & CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE 100 Years Of Blues (ALLIGATOR) 4 JOHN LEE HOOKER Documenting The Sensation Recordings 1948-52 (ACE) 5 KIRK FLETCHER My Blues Pathway (CLEOPATRA) 6 NEW MOON JELLY ROLL FREEDOM ROCKERS Volume 1 (STONY PLAIN) 7 BEN LEVIN Carryout Or Delivery (VIZZTONE) 8 KIM WILSON Take Me Back!: The Bigtone Sessions (M. C.) 9 FRANCK L. GOLDWASSER Sweet Little Black Spider (SLIMBYRD) 10 BOBBY RUSH Rawer Than Raw (DEEP RUSH/THIRTY TIGERS)…

1 BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN Bonny Light Horseman (37D03D) 2 PETER KNIGHT’S GIGSPANNER BIG BAND Natural Invention (GIGSPANNER) 3 SHIRLEY COLLINS Heart’s Ease (DOMINO) 4 STICK IN THE WHEEL 5 SUZZY ROCHE & LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE I Can Still Hear You (STORYSOUND) 6 FAY HIELD Wrackline (TOPIC) 7 WILL POUND A Day Will Come (LULUBUG) 8 BAND OF BURNS The Thread (ORD BAN MUSIC) 9 ELIZA CARTHY & BEN SEAL Through That Sound My Secret Was Made Known (HEM HEM) 10 SETH LAKEMAN A Pilgrim’s Tale (BMG)…

1 NUBYA GARCIA Source (CONCORD JAZZ) 2 IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS Who Sent You? (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM) 3 MOSES BOYD Dark Matter (EXODUS) 4 SPAZA Uprize! (MUSHROOM HALF HOUR) 5 JON HASSELL Seeing Through Sound (NDEYA) 6 GOGO PENGUIN GoGo Penguin (BLUE NOTE) 7 ROB MAZUREK EXPLODING STAR ORCHESTRA Dimensional Stardust (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM/ NONESUCH) 8 PARADISE CINEMA Paradise Cinema (GONDWANA) 9 ALAN BRAUFMAN The Fire Still Burns (VALLEY OF SEARCH) 10 IMMANUEL WILKINS Omega (BLUE NOTE)…

RICHARD OSBORN FIRST MET ROBBIE BASHO IN 1968. A politically active student at Stanford University eager to embrace the drug counterculture, Osborn was also deep into the improvisational folk scene coming out of the Jabberwock coffee house in Berkeley, California. “I’d heard a couple of Robbie’s albums,” says Osborn, “but it wasn’t ‘til I saw him that…” He pauses to reconsider what he is about to say. “He gave a concert at Stanford University Students’ Union,” continues Osborn, “and his personal presence blew me away. He played some raga pieces from The Falconer’s Arm I and I instantly knew I had to study with this guy. I called him up the next day.” By 1968, the 28-year-old Basho was already a guitarist of strange and shimmering talents, combining Eastern and…

“PRETTY MUCH every time Jack and Meg rehearsed at the beginning, I was there, but in 1997, I was 14, 15, so I couldn’t get into the early Gold Dollar shows. My first one was in Toledo, and for the first year it was hit or miss. It could be amazing, or, ‘Oh man, that did not go well’, whether it was equipment breaking, or the crowd not responding. In May ‘98, just after the first single came out, they were opening at the Gold Dollar for a ‘return to rock’ band from San Francisco called Dura-Delinquent, and I remember thinking, Ooooh, fuuuuck! Brian Muldoon came over with his thumbs up and said, ‘That was beyond rock’n'roll – it was art up there!’ From that point on, it stops being…

• In April 2016, towards the end of AC/DC’s Rock Or Bust world tour, doctors warned Brian Johnson he risked total hearing loss if he didn’t retire immediately. Remarkably, the cause wasn’t 36 years of Touch Too Much, but rather a punctured ear drum sustained while indulging his passion for vintage car racing sans earplugs. Axl Rose famously stood-in for him on the remaining dates, but Johnson’s triumphant return comes thanks to hearing specialist Stephen Ambrose, whose custom-made in-ear monitors act like “a synthetic second eardrum”, absorbing harmful sound pressures.…

Kruder & Dorfmeister 1995 G-STONE. CD/DL/LP Pangs of nostalgia strike when listening to this long-player of fuggy, languid downtempo from venerable Austrian duo Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister. Recently discovered in a dusty corner of their studio and remastered - 1995 being its original birth year - the album is a welcome flashback to a sound that deserves urgent reappraisal. Craven Faults Enclosures THE LEAF LABEL. DL/LP Humankind’s complex relationship with our landscape is explored within the deep drone, motorik rhythms and delicate analogue melodies that the shadowy Craven Faults fashions from a mighty bank of modular synthesizers, Korg and Farfisa. Rumours still abound about the true identity of its creator, but who cares when the end results are as mesmeric and seductive as this? Susannah Stark Time Together (Hues…

• Was Aretha’s difficult start in life the source of her ability to tease out the pain and sorrow, the love and joy, in songs? When she was six her mother, Barbara, left the Detroit family home, unable to live with philandering patriarch Rev C.L. Franklin’s affairs. In her gospel years, just a child herself, Aretha gave birth at the ages of 12 and 14. Later, her marriage to Atlantic outlasted marriage to first husband Ted White and her relationship with “soul mate” Ken Cunningham. In 1978, she married actor Glynn Turman, divorcing in ‘84. In reality, she was married to music.…

Tracks: Taxidermist Surf / Invasion Of The Dragonmen / Nitrous Burn Out / Clean Up On Aisle #9 (Turn Up The Monitors) / Journey To The Stars / Cowboy Playing Dead / Illidium Q-36 / Sadie Hawkins Atom Bomb / The Human Calculator / Organ Smash / Cattle Drive / Escape Through The Air Vent / Rudy’s Lounge / Mermaid Love / Eric Estrotica / Alien Visitors Personnel: Star Crunch (Causley)/ (guitar, laserguns, Q-Tips and rare obligatory vocals)/ Dr. Deleto & His Invisible Vaportron (Goodwin) (bass, sterilized rhythm guitar, etc.)/ Coco, The Electronic Monkey Wizard (Del Bueno) (alternate universe bass, percussion, etc.)/ Birdstuff (Teasley) (hi-hat)/ Grand Master Useless (unknown) (keys, bass)/ John Agar. Producer: Jim Marrer / Birdstuff Released: spring ‘93 Recorded: Zero Return Studio, Alabama Chart peak: n/a Available:…

Music, Money, Madness… Jimi Hendrix In Maui LEGACY RECORDINGS. CD+DVD EVEN AN inspired novelist with a penchant for rock’n'roll fanfiction might struggle to muster circumstances as tragic as those surrounding this new documentary by John McDermott. In July 1970, Jimi Hendrix - just months shy of his 28th birthday and a year removed from his Monday morning Woodstock triumph - decamped to a rented Episcopalian charm school in Maui for several weeks of deserved tropical vacation. He’d toured that year with his new Cry Of Love trio while struggling to meet the skyrocketing construction costs of his dreamland Electric Lady studio, still not open back in New York. But in Hawaii, his hardline manager, Michael Jeffery, hoodwinked Hendrix into participating in Rainbow Bridge, a demented and discursive hodgepodge of counterculture…

DECEMBER 1964 ...Sam Cooke is murdered DECEMBER II His swinging Live At The Copa album had entered the Top 100 and his trophy cabinet of hits included Chain Gang, Wonderful World and Twistin’ The Night Away. He was telegenic, with a voice of effortless emotive power, and his self-penned material was growing in vision; he’d also foreseen how to survive an exploitative music business, having set up his own publishing concern and label. Surely it was only a matter of time before Sam Cooke crossed over into the premier league of American entertainers, alongside Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and the rest. Yet in the early hours of this December Monday, Sam Cooke met the most dismal of ends, shot to death in a Los Angeles fleapit motel. Born in 1931…

Carly Simon said Warren Beatty - the alleged star of her [1972 US Number 1] hit You’re So Vain - once called to thank her for the song. What are other good examples of the subject of a composition responding to it? Lee Higham, via e-mail Fred Says: If we mean public disagreement rather than answer records or engineered beefs to hype sales, reactions vary widely. In 1974, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama coolly named Neil Young and his songs Alabama and Southern Man: a contrite Neil later wrote that he “richly deserved the shot.” When MOJO writer Mat Snow was beasted on 1986 Nick Cave flexi Scum (after being lukewarm about his ex-housemate Cave’s LP The Firstborn Is Dead), he declared it “very funny”, while Island boss Chris Blackwell…